Kickstarter Cancels Tentacle Rape Card Game

A few days ago, the existence of a project on Kickstarter–a card game where players take the role of a tentacle monster and attempt to rape high school girls called Tentacle Bento–started to attract some attention. After Brandon Sheffield at Insert Credit, and later Luke Plunkett at Kotaku, wrote negatively aboutthe game, Kickstarter cancelled its funding.

Good on Kickstarter for doing the right thing. They have no obligation to host funding for a game that trivializes rape by turning it into a cutesy game (and also offers as one of the backer rewards the option to put “yourself or your wife/girlfriend” in the game as a target, just putting that out there), and when people spoke out about it, they took it down. I hope that in light of this, they develop more guidelines for screening misogynist and other hateful content in the future.

The story doesn’t end there, however. Unwilling to miss a chance to show his support for rape culture, Gabe from Penny Arcade tweeted in support of the company behind the game, Soda Pop Miniatures, who set up a donation page on their own website after their Kickstarter was closed. When someone tried to engage with him and explain the problem people have with the game, he insisted that “censorship… is wrong” (despite the fact that no censorship has taken place, since Kickstarter isn’t the government), and literally called the individual “a crazy person.” He also brought out the old “no one complains about murder in games!” canard, despite the fact that actually, people do, and murder in general is not treated as trivial or a joke in the same way that rape is. Great job, Gabe! Keep on taking a noble stand against those mean, powerful rape survivors and their allies who just want to keep nerds like you down.

On her Formspring, anna anthropy points out the vast difference between games about sex, like those she makes, and games that trivialize rape like Tentacle Bento.

The point is, we live in a rape culture, a world where rape is constantly treated as trivial or a joke, where victims are blamed for their own assaults, and where the conviction rate for rapists is distressingly low. Games like Tentacle Bento further trivialize rape and uphold rape culture. Tentacle Bento may just be a drop in the ocean of rape culture, but every drop counts, and no individual or private company is obligated to support such a game. The fact that many in the game community spoke out against this game, and that Kickstarter listened, is a good thing.

42 Responses to Kickstarter Cancels Tentacle Rape Card Game

Damn it, Mike. I really want to like Penny Arcade, and I really want to like you, but you say all the wrong things about what is most important to me. You make it so very difficult when you go out of your way to offend those who just want a world where rape isn’t somebody’s punchline or cutesy card game pastime.

Not happy to learn the company wants to be swarmed with free booth babes, too. They’re real charmers.

What bothers me the most about Gabe’s huge rape-apologist attitude problem is that he’s already shown he’s not above allowing his fans to swarm and attack the people who call him out on it. He sat back during the Dickwolves debacle and said nothing while actual rape victims were being targeted by his fans for the ‘crime’ of having a negative opinion about his comic, most likely because he was convinced the people complaining about it were just ‘being crazy’ too (and therefore deserved to be punished for speaking out). To Gabe, bullying people into silence is ‘justice’ if you don’t like what they’re saying. He’s a petulant bully.

Thanks for this post, especially the point about how this is not a case of censorship since Kickstarter is not the government (and also not an institution acting as a state). Gabe obviously needs to look up the definition of censorship. Sidenote: I was concerned at first after reading the headline when it looked like the Red Panda was facepalming the canceling of the game. Maybe he should facepalm at the end of the post instead?

Thanks for the write-up, and thanks to Burek for providing the link to it.

I strongly dislike Gabe and his attitude toward complaints about how he handles anything relating to sexual assault. He’s a complete twit, and I sincerely hope he always manages to find legos to step on for the rest of his days.

Well, at least it was well-timed. My resolve was beginning to waver re: my personal embargo of anything Penny Arcade, and now comes evidence that nothing’s changed over there after all. Thanks Gabe! Doubt I’ll ever be back.

Disliked & flagged as hate speech: demeaning against women. Probably could have gone for suggestive w/o nudity and maybe an actual abuse flag (two are relevant: child abuse and abuse of vulnerable individual). Since the video doesn’t depict an actual human in danger of tentacle attack, though, the hate-speech flag seemed most suitable.

While I substantially agree with you, I disagree on a procedural point: censorship, in most definitions I’ve seen, does not require the government to be involved. While the First Amendment right to speech only applies to governmental restrictions, censorship is a general concept that can be applied by any entity. For example, otherwise, the concept of self-censorship makes no sense. Communities rely upon voluntary and involuntary censorship for applying standards, enforcing cohesion, and the like.

In this particular case, community censorship is totally warranted (censorship is not inherently wrong! Context matters!), as is, presumably, a clearer policy on inappropriate Kickstarter projects. On the other hand, if they started removing projects solely because they, say, expressed support for the Republican party, I think that would be entirely lame and inappropriate (but within their rights), despite the fact that I’m not a fan of said party.

Gabe’s being idiotic, and I think he’s missing the forest for the trees in terms of speech rights; I’d like to believe that his heart is in the right place, but given his history I suspect that my ability to even do that is a function of male privilege.

There was something else nagging at me about this, and I think that’s it. I don’t think the pervasive “Japanese people/things are cool/weird” attitude of the internet is all that harmful (considering that from what I’ve heard the reverse is true in Japan), but when it’s being applied like this…

I am so sick of the “oh, but it’s actually making fun of it” defense. Bullshit. You can’t make fun of a thing by simply doing a thing, and just because you say something’s a joke doesn’t make it less pernicious. I feel sick to my stomach when I ponder what some these people must think of women and girls, to think pretending to prey on them and rape them is funny.

There’s zero satire to this. How are they making fun of it? Pastel colors do not equal parody. They’re using the word satire when all they’ve done is recreate a hentai rape scenario and drenched it in cutesy imagery.

I feel the only kind of “humour” these asshats know is that kind of uber-ironic hipster humour like “Oh look I said something racist/sexist/…-ist! But it’s funny because I’m not racist/sexist/…-ist! Isn’t it ironic? HAHAHA!” /facepalm

“He also brought out the old “no one complains about murder in games!” canard, despite the fact that actually, people do, and murder in general is not treated as trivial or a joke in the same way that rape is.”

I hope I don’t come off as flippant or suggesting that a game about tentacle rape has any particular merit, but the above line is something that frustrates me about this discussion.

Yes, the argument that violent games aren’t treated similarily has become a cliché. That said, it is my experience that the immediate response – that murder (and violence in general) isn’t treated as trivial or humorous in the broader cultural context – is also raised as quickly and easily as the initial argument, and it seems to be taken for granted that just bringing this up is a sufficient rebuttal. I’ve never actually seen anyone examine the merits of the comparison in any real depth, so if you have any links to blog entries, articles or something, I’d be happy to see them.

I think there is some cause to raise this point here, in particular. The fact of the matter is that many of the games discussed and enjoyed here at Border House – Dragon Age II comes to mind – involve a great deal of flippant violence and, in occasion, outright murder, and I can’t recall seeing much analysis or examination of it.

The key difference is how rape involves objectification in real life. Context is everything.

OK, so in lots of video games the mooks are objectified in that they are reduced to an object for the player’s consumption. The difference is, in real life we don’t generally objectify people in order to kill them for pleasure or reward, and most of us rightfully think of those who do as repugnant or sick. We don’t empathise with real-life serial murderers or hired killers. We recognise that even people who kill for socially mandated reasons (armed police, soldiers and the like) often find it difficult and traumatic, and we train those professionals to make taking life a last resort.

On the other hand, women and girls are objectified for sexual compulsion all the time. We’re regularly reduced to an “8 out of 10″ or a “notch on the bedpost” or an “I wouldn’t touch it with someone else’s dick”. In addition, may of us have been in the past victims of rape or sexual assault and I would be surprised if there was one woman here who hasn’t been sexually harassed at some time. We hear people joke about these victims or hear ignorant comments about how we bring it upon ourselves all the time.

In short, we live in a rape culture. Killing in games is a fantasy, because we don’t live in a murder culture. Rape in games is far too close to home. Laughing or joking in particular about rape cuts too close to the bone for many of us.

It’s not impossible to do satire about difficult subjects – Chris Morris is a master of that. Search on the internet for “paedogeddon” and you’ll find the episode of Brass Eye that dealt with the moral panic about paedophiles, it’s a great example. I don’t think there’s anything that inherently shouldn’t be the subject of satire; I just think that anyone who jokes about something that is so sensitive should do so with a good awareness of what is likely to upset people and why they may be hurt, and make an informed choice, not an ignorant one. Note I’m saying upset, not offend. I’m not offended when someone jokes about raping teenage girls. I’m upset because I was one of those teenage girls.

Thanks for the response! I disagree about the conclusion that a ‘murder culture’ (a culture of violence, perhaps, is a better term) doesn’t exist – however, for the record, I don’t think it’s properly comparable with rape culture, since different mechanisms are involved. That said, there’s a few points I’d like to make. Arguments of this sort quickly get repetitive and long-winded, so I’ll keep this brief.

It’s a no-brainer that murder is universally considered heinous. I don’t think this makes a good argument, though, since in contemporary Western culture, it could be said that rape is considered the worst, most heinous and most offensive crime that can be commited (with the exception of pedophilia, which is even more loathed). The thing is, this is only true of a small subset of rapes – the type where some sadistic, inhuman monster assaults women on dark alleys. Most real rapes are acquintance rape, date rape, marital rape and so on, commited by fairly normal human beings. This is part of the problem – the image of the rapist-monster is difficult to reconcile with real people, which brings out the call of “he’s not a rapist, he just made a bad call!” or “she led him on” or whatever. That rape even happened is denied. This is classic rape culture.

The same thing goes for murder, too, since most killers and assaulters aren’t psychopathic, inhuman serial killers. “It wasn’t murder, he just made a bad call!” and “the kid picked a fight” are basically what some commenters on conservative blogs (among other places) said about the Trayvon Martin case. Blame is shifted from the perpetrator to the victim and murder is reframed as “self-defence”. Similar themes are used to fetishize school shooters, justify domestic violence and tell people (mostly young adult men) that they’re inferior human beings for backing down from fights.

Unless I’m harshly mistaken, the concept of rape culture is that the actual acts of rape are the tip of an iceberg that constitutes a continuum of elements like sexual objectification, victim-blaming, marginalization and silencing tactics that all ultimately contribute to normalizing and denying acts of rape. Fantasy violence revolves around a similar set of bad, vaguely interrelated memes that tell people that violence makes them heroic and powerful, and reduce other people to non-people that are OK to hurt and kill. I think it’s letting yourself off the hook much too easily to pass it off as harmless, empowering fantasy with no bearing on real life. “I’d never do that in real life!” is pretty much what people say about rape, too.

Violence against people of color in the United States is one of extremely few things that are actually comparable to rape culture. The victim-blaming you cite IS comparable to the victim-blaming of rape victims because young men of color like Trayvon Martin and women who are raped are both marginalized groups. They are both assumed to have deserved the violence done to them somehow BECAUSE of racism, in the case of Trayvon Martin, or misogyny, in the case of rape against women.

However, it is NOT comparable to violence in video games. In most games the violence is against non-humans like aliens or monsters, or is in cases like DA2 (since you brought it up) usually white people against white people, or diverse groups against each other. I would fucking hope that a game that allows the player to live out the racist fantasy of playing as a white man gunning down black people would spark as much outrage as a rape game, and this IS an issue that has come up in the past with Resident Evil 5.

So yeah, you’re never going to shoot space aliens in real life, and you’re never going to fling lightningbolts from your fingertips at people who are coming at you with swords. Comparing that sort of violence to rape or to racist violence is pretty offensive. Fantasy violence is not a pervasive problem in the United States; rape and racist violence ARE.

The part that bothers me the most about DA2 in specific is the unproblematized vigilantism. You can hardly get out of your house at night without wading knee deep in the corpses of dead bandits, all of whom conveniently attack you without the faintest shred of concern for their lives to the last man despite being much weaker than you.

Part of the mandatory quest to regain your former family home involves breaking in and searching the house for a will that proves it belongs to you. Also, killing everyone there while you’re at it. So you have a nice heart-to-heart with your sibling about reclaiming your family’s heritage, with the blood of the former inhabitants still clinging to your armour. Later, your mother mentions off-hand that since the people previously living in your former home are dead now, you can move in any time once the paperwork is done. How essentially decent people like Aveline and Varric are fine with this, I cannot fathom.

Oh, but they were slavers! Well, that just makes it all right, doesn’t it? I hate the way DA2 uses ‘slaver’ and ‘thief’ as a no-questions-asked mandates to kill people without care or consequence. I resent how the game pretends I’m a good guy when I do this. I’d applaud the game for making me feel like such a huge asshole, but it’s my impression that, in this case, it was unintentional.

Is this relevant? I think so, though you’re welcome to disagree. Zimmerman started following Trayvon because he decided he was on drugs and “up to no good”. Now clearly Zimmerman decided this was so because he was black, so yes, blatant, horrible racism. Obviously. But underlying this is the hideous, yet faintly popular idea that, in the first place, you can stalk people who are “up to no good” and shoot them dead “in self defense”.

Thematically, DA2 involves vigilante violence with total moral fiat, commited against enemies stripped of all human features except the ability to die to make you a big man. Am I reading too much into this? I just don’t see how using a sword, or lightning bolts for that matter, makes the context any better, any more than raping someone with a tentacle would magically render rape into harmless satire.

Looking at what I just wrote, I realize I’m starting to sound angry and rambling, so I apologize. I appreciate that this is a tangent in this thread (though I don’t think that I’m really derailing, since the previous discussion was already mostly over). This is just something that I’ve mulled over for quite a while now.

Well, I looked at it as an example of flailing derailment of the argument and the focal point issue. Using a generalization rebuttal isn’t effective in the context of this argument, imo, since ‘no one complains about murder in games’ is very non-specific versus the specific issue that makes of this game of ‘snatch’/rape of women.

The topic of murder in games is a valid one worth discussing and analyzing, absolutely. The topic of ‘violence’ in games, however, is a lot more vague with a very, very broad range and comes with a whole host of attitudes and reasons and intent. Violence can be everything from just a slap to outright torture, from defending a loved one from imminent death at the hands of another to a swashbuckling pirate that has no care for human life. It gets a lot more difficult to have an argument on generalized violence. But murder in games, with intent and premeditated motivation and such, is definitely worthwhile in discussing and taking apart.

A big difference, too, is the scope of a game. If the scope of a game offers the player a buffet of choices that aren’t ‘Choice 1: Murder, Choice 2: Murder, Choice 3: Murder’ then I find it more passable since it is being left up to a player to dictate their character, and it isn’t a forced choice. Now, if the scope of a game is like Hitman, where you are actively a set protagonist for hire, killing people for personal gain, and those are your mandatory objectives, then yeah… it is something I find really disturbing to me. Same way I find the glorification of war and death in shooter wartime games to be very off-putting and unsettling. But I think that games where murder is mandatory and objectified and made with rewards as the sole purpose of the story and mechanics and scope are in the minority.

That’s the general direction of what this game is setting out to do. To make objectification of women (women as objects to ‘take’), rape, competitive ‘fun’ in taking as many women as you can, and rewarding you for doing so by the end… It’s the sole scope of the game, and mandatory.

Anyway, rambly thoughts, I suppose. But nope, there are some of us that do complain about murder in games as well. So he’s wrong there by saying ‘no one.’

Now, argument about violence in video games is used in such situations as derailing, rebuttal or a way to turn the table, that’s 100 % true but as you said : “The topic of murder in games is a valid one worth discussing and analyzing, absolutely.”, thing is that actually it isn’t discussed almost at all (among gamers that is). Sure Call of Duty gets some discussion but weight comes stronger on political implications then general gratification of violence that video games presents. And in games like Mass Effect ? I don’t recall any discussion about it. We don’t live in “murder/violence culture” but one can say “yet” and ask the question how video games contribute to this state.

Murder *specifically* in games is not oft discussed and analyzed. However, violence in general in games and how that contributes to real violence or desensitization of individuals and whether or not it impacts youths vs. adults emotionally and mentally, and all these similar manner of topics have been open for discussion often in public fora.

Not among gamers though which is another argument why „what about murder/violence ?” is just way of derailment because gamers don’t want to read about it so whenever actually subject of violence in games is brought up (rather from outside of gaming circles) is almost universally dismissed and declared as a soap bubble.

Thanks for asking this, I stumped myself while thinking about this argument the other day. We go around saying “that test killed me” or “the sun is murdering my eyes” as exaggerated jokes, but no one stops and tells me how offensive that is. And I asked myself, why not? I mean, I FEEL more offended by the trivialization of rape, but I couldn’t explain why.

I think the key thing is that the jokes are made in a context where there is a lot of rape but relatively a lot less murder. When someone jokes about killing someone, it’s so unlikely we take it as ridiculous. We can’t do that about rape – at least, not here in the UK we can’t. Jokes about rape carry with them a level of threat that jokes about murder don’t, and they also carry an extra message of keeping women in their place. I would imagine this is different in situations where casual killing is more commonplace.

This is why the “but what about murder” argument is so derailing; whilst on the surface it’s trivially similar, the social mechanisms and cultural context are so different. Murder and violence and games is something to discussed, but it doesn’t mean it should be used to silence discussion about the issue of rape. Survivors are shamed and silenced enough already.

I do think that both murder and rape have a place in entertainment and storytelling, including games, because storytelling is one way of examining and dealing with important issues and sharing experiences. What I do think is that anyone who does deal with difficult issues should do so in an informed and sensitive manner. I also think there is room for subtlety and shades of grey. The use of kidnapping and rape in the City Elf origin story from Dragon Age: Origins is also a bit problematic for me, but to a much lesser degree and for different reasons than the use of kidnapping and rape as a gameplay mechanic in Tentacle Bento.

I wanted to thank everyone for having this discussion, and having it in such a level-headed manner. I wondered myself why murdering in games (God of War, Uncharted) is seen as acceptable (or, at least, more acceptable) and raping (Rapelay, Tentacle Bento) is not. I considered bringing this question up myself, but alas, I am a coward.

But since we’ve got the ball rolling, here are some of my own thoughts:

On the one hand, murdering can often be seen as a justifiable action (armed revolution, protecting loved ones, etc.), whereas raping is unjustified no matter the context.

On the other hand, many games/TV shows/movies glorify murdering for the sake of revenge, for a professional occupation, for kicks, and I’m not convinced that this isn’t a pervasive problem. If these are all irresponsible treatments of murder, shouldn’t we be speaking out against them, rather than accepting them as a part of our culture?

Of course, you could argue that these fictional treatments of murdering and violence are clearly part of fiction, that they are fantasy, and as long as we can tell the difference between reality and fantasy, we shouldn’t worry about these media trivializing either murder or violence.

Yet, under that line of reasoning, you could say much the same thing about fictional treatments of raping, as well…right?

Still, as others have mentioned, rape is a crime overwhelmingly perpetrated against a certain group of people (i.e. women), and so glorifying rape is intertwined with dehumanizing women.

And yet, if our culture suddenly started treating rape as a crime against both women and men, the action would not lose its reprehensible quality. Men or women, it would still be dehumanizing people.

On the one hand, murdering can often be seen as a justifiable action (armed revolution, protecting loved ones, etc.), whereas raping is unjustified no matter the context.

Yes, good point. This is why I think torture is actually more comparable to rape in games than blanket violence or even murder. Torture is never acceptable, either. It’s also extremely rare that a video game goes there, either (has anyone written about Splinter Cell: Conviction?).

Survival Crisis Z requires the player to torture people with a car battery twice in order to progress the plot. Did it once a few years ago and can’t bring myself to do so again. Revolver Ocelot isn’t someone I’d consider a good role model.

(Seriously: second plot-mission of the game is “go torture someone to get the mission-giver’s stuff back, that the victim allegedly stole”. Gagh.)

“He also brought out the old ‘no one complains about murder in games!’ canard, despite the fact that actually, people do, and murder in general is not treated as trivial or a joke in the same way that rape is.”

Gotta love derailing tactics :/

This is similar to the “what about the men?” tactic some people use during discussions of sexism in games. It’s not that no one cares about how men are represented, or that the people criticizing the sexist portrayals of women are perfectly fine with the often problematic portrayals of men, it’s just that at that time, the focus of the discussion is on *women* in games. The person bringing up men is usually trying to distract from that point and probably does not care about the portrayal of men *or* women, just like how I doubt that Gabe cares all that much about murder in games.

While there are many important things to discuss when talking about problematic aspects of games, it’s important to stay on-topic. That way, everyone is on the same page and people can voice their concerns without others going, “but what about [different topic]?” whenever they try to make a point. It’s about time and place, and during a discussion of a game where you play as a tentacle monster kidnapping and raping women, it is derailing and inappropriate to bring up murder in games as a way to “prove” how this game isn’t “that bad.” If they were interested in seriously discussing murder, or even why people have different reactions to murder in games than to rape in games, they are free to write their own articles or posts and invite others to discuss those points there.

(I don’t think the discussion in the comments here about comparisons between murder and rape is inappropriate, since it’s mentioned in the article. Just wanted to point that out in case anyone thought I was objecting to the discussion about it here.)

Surely a project that never should have left the confines of a local kink/bdsm/fetishist group? Well done to Kickstarter for their decision on this.

As for Gabe – as much as I have a broad and deep distaste for censorship, not sure where this counts, particularly when this is less censoring and more attempting to force a company to cooperate with a project they apparently have serious moral qualms about. Derailtastic.

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